EDMONTON - It was an emotional day for residents of a southside apartment that was destroyed by a massive fire in mid-January. Picking through the rubble, some of the now displaced residents tried to salvage what is left of their belongings. This just as fire officials revealed the blaze that has left more than 100 people homeless was started by a plumber's torch.
"Plumbers working on the boiler sweating the copper pipes with a torch set the insulation on fire, which then spread to the ceiling throughout the building," said Fire Marshall Tom Karpa with Edmonton Fire Rescue.
What's concerning, though, is that the fire started around 11 a.m., but fire crews didn't get the call until three and a half hours later.
"From what I understand, it was actually the owner of the plumbing firm that was contacted and called 9-1-1," added Karpa.
To drive home the point of what a difference that extra time made, Karpa gave the example of another fire that started just days later exactly the same way. In that situation, because plumbers called 911 right away, the fire caused only $200,000 dollars of damage to two suites compared to 13 million dollars of damage to the Heatheridge Estates building.
"You can see what's so important here - if they would've contacted us immediately, we would've been out in minutes, really," he said.
Displaced tenants are now left wondering what's next.
"It sucks to hear that, " said former resident, Randy Smith.
"But at least everyone's ok. You can't replace lives," added his partner Morgan Jones. "It's frustrating but you can't be mad. We have a new place so we're just going to start fresh."
Smith admitted there's a lot of residents who are worse off than they are.
"We're one of the lucky ones," said Jones.
With files from Fletcher Kent, Global News
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